Book 1: An Illumination of Matthew
Part 2: The Thesis of Jesus
Chapter 5: Abolish or Fulfill? (Righteousness I: the Past)
This episode continues Part 2: The Thesis of Jesus, beginning with the first discourse of Jesus - what has become known as the Sermon on the Mount. Jake joins again - this time, in my therapy office in Seattle - and we discuss Jesus' masterpiece, his "thesis" on Righteousness, the foundational ethical teaching of Christian culture.
Here we look at chapter 5 of Matthew's Gospel, which contains the first part of the Sermon on the Mount and pertains to right relationship to the past, the tradition, and the Father. In the following episodes we will discuss chapters 6 and 7, which correlate to the questions of present and future.
In this episode:
0:45 - Recap last episode - the 3 dimensions of Jesus’ Messianic Campaign
2:45 - The combination of the 3 dimensions in the Sermon on the Mount
3:45 - What Jesus came to do with his life
5:45 - The symbolism of the Mount and the invocation of Moses/the Torah
10:10 - Reading of the Beattitudes
10:50 - The Beattitude and the invocation of David/the Psalms
13:50 - The Structure of the Sermon on the Mount
16:00 - The theme: Righteousness=Ethics=How to live
17:30 - The thesis: Righteousness is life lived from the heart; the heart is grounded in presence to the present; presence to the present requires right relationship to past and future
19:25 - Clearing space for the present
21:40 - The 8th beattitude: Persecuted for Righteousness
26:25 - Courage, despite paranoid anxiety
29:30 - Jesus embodies the courage to shine
31:20 - Abolish or Fulfill - on right relationship with the past
33:15 - Abolishing the past leads to the return of the repressed
36:50 - The 7th beattitude: Peacemakers
38:40 - The formula of fulfillment: “You have heard it said… but I say to you”
40:50 - The only reason why you haven’t killed anyone yet
44:45 - The most difficult ethical teaching ever given
48:00 - The 6th beattitude: Pure of Heart
50:35 - Purity - the undivided heart
52:10 - Being married to your one and only finite life
54:10 - The moral equivalence between porn consumers and sex workers
1:01:05 - The 5th beattitude: Mercy
1:03:15 - The oldest principle of law - retributive justice
1:08:00 - Growing into the full stature of ethical being
1:09:10 - The difference between mercy and passivity/masochism
1:12:50 - How Jesus embodies mercy on the cross
1:14:30 - Did Jesus do it so that we wouldn’t have to?
1:17:00 - The guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John
1:20:05 - The first mention of “Heavenly Father” and the being of the Son
1:22:05 - Ultimate relations to past, present, and future: a glimpse of the Trinity
1:23:20 - Closing the book on this chapter
